What Does PTSD in Veterans Say?

On April 2 at the Fort Hood, Texas, army base, Iraq war veteran Ivan Lopez
killed three people, injured 16, then shot himself before he could be taken
into custody by military police. Initial reports that Lopez may have been suffering
from depression, a traumatic brain injury and/or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) have made some
veterans skittish about a tie between PTSD – which affects 155,000
troops – and the propensity for suddenly turning on your own people.

Certainly this sad incident is no reason to suddenly become terrified of all
people with mental disorders or all veterans of various wars. Violence
is rare in America, and contrary to the media and their panics, shootings like
this are particularly rare (in spite of the creepy familiarity of the location).
On the other hand, the staggeringly high rate of PTSD in returning veterans
does suggest something good about humanity. It’s a tragic, costly, and endless
lesson – but war is bad for humans, even those who make it happen. If 22 veterans
a day by last year’s count kill themselves – more die that way than they do
in combat since at least 2008 – doesn’t that suggest that there is something
fundamentally harmful about war, and something sadly good about humans who react
so badly to having participated in it?

Even humans who are given weapons and told to fight for a noble cause of liberation
do not react well to the real face of war. If their friends don’t die, civilians
will, and there will often be nothing they can do about it. As unfortunate as
it is that hundreds of thousands of individuals who fought in the last two U.S.
wars (to say nothing of the civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, who remain the
greatest victims in all of this) have permanent problems both physical and mental,
it’s worthy of comment that being told you are fighting for a good reason doesn’t
prevent mental distress when the fight is done.

What used to be called shellshock (or neurasthenia more broadly before that)
when it was identified during World War I is now known as simply PTSD (though
that comes from any traumatic incident and is not war-specific). Initially,
there was great debate over the cause of shellshock – which reached alarming
numbers during pivotal Great War battles such as the Somme and Passchendaele.
Some doctors were convinced it was psychological, physical, or just good old-fashioned
cowardice on the part of soldiers. Mixed in with enlightened psychiatrists such
as William Rivers, who used "talking cures," were folks more interested
in brutalizing traumatized soldiers into manning up and doing
their "duty." World War II had its share of PTSD-suffering
soldiers as well, but that tends to be brushed over in general histories of
that "good war." And the familiar American trope of the unstable Vietnam
war veteran remains a useful one for fiction, and an unfortunate one for real
life, considering that the Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 30
percent of the soldiers suffered such a trauma (as opposed to 11
to 20 percent of Iraq or Afghanistan war vets). In the modern era, what
was once "shellshock" is seen as real trauma – some of it traumatic
brain injury-based, some simply psychological – but treating it through a backlogged
bureaucracy is another matter entirely. The government seems unable to cope
with the dire effects of the wars it started, even on its own soldiers.

What about war makes people suffer so psychologically? There is no easy, ideological
answer, but it’s hard for the antiwar crowd not to interpret facts such as the
numbers of suicides having doubled in deployed veterans since 2004 as something
telling. Clearly, soldiers endlessly deployed and redeployed have suffered from
combat stress. But there has been a three-fold
increase in PTSD-like symptoms in troops who have not even been in battle.
This could be partially an effect of lessened standards in the military’s admittance
of troops. But it also ties into a lack of job opportunities and a difficulty
in adjusting to civilian life. Recruiters who sell young people on the idea
of gaining job experience and skills are overselling the point to people who
need their education paid for. And after the camaraderie of the armed forces,
living life in civilian circles where people have no idea what you’ve been through
makes drug and alcohol abuse understandable as well. Plus, PTSD tends to happen
more often to younger
individuals who suffered a trauma. Correspondingly, the rate of suicide
is four times higher in 18- to 24-year-old veterans than in the civilian population.

Fearing veterans doesn’t do anyone any good. Ivan Lopez was not your average
soldier. And your average soldier in distress is most likely going to hurt him
or herself. Regardless, the public needs a good, long look in the mirror when
it comes to its treatment of veterans. We’re all guilty of a vile mixture of
an abstract support for "the troops" (slap that on your bumper) and
a complete disinterest in their well-being when they return from the wars the
majority of us supported or at least tolerated. And thanks to an initially timid,
now distracted news media, the public never sees what real war looks like, either.
But soldiers do, and it hurts them. Even if they are not the pure "good
guys" that war hawks claim; even if we wish they hadn’t joined the military
at all, soldiers got their own sort of raw deal thanks to the work of the war
propagandists. Soldiers are not innocent victims of war, but they are also part
of its mindless machinery and rarely escape unscathed. Maybe the PTSD soldiers
so often suffer says humans were made for better things than war.

Lucy Steigerwald is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and a columnist
for VICE.com. She previously worked as an Associate Editor for Reason magazine.
She is most angry about police, prisons, and wars. Steigerwald blogs at www.thestagblog.com.

Author: Lucy Steigerwald

Lucy Steigerwald is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and an editor for Young Voices. She has also written for VICE, Playboy.com, the Washington Post.com, The American Conservative, and other outlets. Her blog is www.thestagblog.com. Follow her on twitter @lucystag.

Excellent essay. But as a veteran of the Vietnam era, I do take some offense to Lucy's sentence in the last paragraph which begins "We're all guilty." Not everyone blindly supports the troops or is apathetic for their welfare when they return. Also, although a majority shamefully initially supported the wars, it did not take long for many to come to their senses.

Since so many veterans and active duty soldiers are committing suicide, one wonders about the mental states of those living in these hellholes. There is no relief for them. What monsters may their traumatized children grow into?

RICinOR

A very good overview of a complex subject. PTSD has causes, consequences, and treatments that are still not very well understood. The basic premise of this article, that people are good, and damaged by war even if that war has a "good" cause, seems to have proof in the success that Allen Roland has achieved with a treatment based on love and forgiveness. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/04/05/the-12-tr…
Now if we could just find some leaders who weren't so keen on war…

"War is bad for humans", wow what insight. Also as a PTSD sufferer I'm tired of people writing about a subject that they can not possible comprehend.

Mark

Dear Brent,

I appreciate the sarcasm in your first sentence. However, in this day and age when War seems to be the first thought in resolving political and social problems it's a position rarely spoken in polite society. War has become the default solution yet no one seems to see what the boilerplate rhetoric really represents. Hardly a day goes by without some political hack demanding the United States send troops or weapons to some distant corner of the planet they probably can't find on a map. Yes, "war is bad for humans" seems ridiculously obvious but, not apparently to those who have the ability to start or send support for it.

I cannot know your personal suffering. You are correct to say it is not possible for others to comprehend because it's not like having a specific disease with standard symptoms. I would encourage you to write of your trials and tribulations so others may have a better understanding of what you are suffering. You might be the person that will make a difference and effect changes that will cause future generations not to suffer as have you.

In Christ's Love,
Mark

Brent

Mark,

I really appreciate your comments and the polite and courteous way that you presented. I really think what really is frustrating is the fact that through out history war has almost always been one of the first reactions to a crisis.

If you have a chance read the short article "War is a racket" by a marine Major general in 1935 Smedley Butler.

Your Brother in Christ,
Brent

Mark

Dear Brent,

As a nation that many insist is "Christian", I find it appalling that many of those same people would advocate war, yet say they are followers of The Prince of Peace.

Yes, I've read Gen. Butler's take on war making. It's sad so many who say they "support the troops" then want to send them off to be slain and maimed; mostly in service to the vanity, hubris or financial gain of others.

Again, I encourage you to write of your shell shock. (I prefer that term to PTSD in that PTSD sanitizes and covers up the real devastation suffered by many). I hope it can help you overcome your situation. I've not faced what you are facing but, I have had moments of despair when I clammed up when opening up(to my wife in particular) was what I needed to regain a sense of being. I don't know if it will help you, I can only pray it will.

Your Brother in Christ,
Mark

Brent

Mark:

I really do wish that I could write about PTSD but, while it may helped people understand the symptoms and impact on your life, you can never really explain how it feels unless you have it.

Brent

Hexexis

Having worked w/ & around armed services pers. for most of the past 35+ yr, may I suggest that the damage done to those that survive combat (what since Korea passes for combat) has less to do w/ individuals & lots more to do w/ the disorder & ill-discipline of the current "defense" institution & the veritable chasm betw. ground forces & the higher echelons.

As someone asked long ago, "What do you do when you don't know what to do?"; when you know your tours of duty in our recent war theaters were completely senseless but you hear ignoramuses, in uniform & not, rave in public about our "successes" & are prohibited by law from challenging the "official line."

What do you do when you know or suspect that those successes would be failures in any profit venture? What do you do when you're troubled but sent packing w/ a hearty but heartless "Attaboy!" by some senior oaf attending only to his next perk?

Brent

In what branch of the service did you serve?

Hexexis

Oh, BTW, if you really think that trouble is "now known as simply PTSD," suggest you go find the late Geo. Carlin's account of what happened to the sufferers when shellshock begat battle fatigue & battle fatigue begat PTSD…

Guest

A house divided against itself cannot stand. There is no esprit de corps in the military. The PTSD comes from their boss, not the "enemy."

Brent

Two quick questions:

1. In which branch of the service did you serve?
2. Who do you mean by the boss?

I'm honestly not trying to be sarcastic, I'm just interested in how you came about with your conclusions of the military and PTSD.